I should probably keep my yap shut. I wrote a long blog entry years ago about Iraq where I advocated going to war because I thought removing Saddam Hussein from power would be good for Iraq. Maybe long-term that logic will prove to be right; however, I doubt if it will be in my lifetime and I doubt it has as much to do with Hussein as a dictator as it does with regional politics and a culture that I will never understand without living there. Basically I opened my trap based on the little bit of data that I had and was completely wrong. That being said, I have an opinion on what is going on in Georgia that I will toss out there because I don’t think our media is responsibly reporting it based on what I am seeing from international media. Someone tell me where I am wrong and where I am right.
As I understand it, a large section of Georgia wants to be Russia (actually, there are several, but Ossetia is just the one getting action right now). Georgia attacked Ossetia to keep that from happening. Russia would love to regain some of the regions it “lost” when the USSR dissolved so they found a reason (dead peacekeepers) to retaliate decisively. Georgian military used the Russian attack as an excuse to do some ethnic cleansing of the people there who want to be Russian (US media is leaving this information out to make it easier to justify supporting Georgia to protect some pipelines). Russia started attacking other sections of Georgia because it wants to win this before it can escalate enough to require cease fires and turn into another Chechnya. US and NATO threaten Russia because Georgia has oil pipelines and militarily strategic locations that benefit the US and NATO.
The history of the region is insane. Like the bulk of that part of the world, it is a history of constant invasion (due to no geographical boundaries that can stop military). Because of that it is difficult to say who is right unless you limit history to certain timeframes and only talk to certain people. The region is in constant flux. The Cliffs Notes history is something like this: Georgia was its own nation with its own royal family. Russia manipulated it politically by not participating in some of Georgia’s wars with neighbors and offering protection during others. Russia somewhat peacefully took it over and exiled its royalty (peacefully) and taxed it and everything went okay for awhile. Then Lenin and Stalin took over and did everything they were known for to Georgia. Then things were quiet for awhile until the USSR dissolved. Georgia was very eager to get out and that eagerness was kind of a slap in the face to Russia. Georgia’s current eagerness to deal with Western nations makes the Russian government very nervous (as it would the US if the US existed in a place where it had a history of constant invasion). Couple that with the fact that many Georgians in the area of conflict want the area to be part of Russia because the president of Georgia is incompitent at best and genocidal at worst and you have what is going on today.
So what should the US be doing in all of this? How about not a fucking thing. This isn’t our fight, it has never been our fight, it should never be our fight. We keep getting into other people’s fights because of pipelines and our ideas of where borders should exist. This is between Russian and Georgia.
What am I missing here? This is a legitimate question posed because it is impossible to know what is going on there without being there. I can only have an opinion based on what I know. It’s easy to blame Russia because that is what Americans do; however, watch this video (provided by Russian Media) and tell me what you think.
